The present invention relates to electronic design automation (EDA) software, and more particularly, to implementing such software in a graphical processing unit.
Integrated circuits continue to advance rapidly and are being widely used in many applications such as computers, consumer electronics, networking, and telecommunications. There are many types of integrated circuits including microprocessors, microcontrollers, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), gate arrays, programmable logic devices (PLDs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), dynamic random access memories (DRAMs), static random access memories (SRAMs), erasable programmable read only memories (EPROMs), electrically erasable programmable read only memories (EEPROMs), and Flash memories.
Design automation tools are needed to simplify and expedite the task of designing an integrated circuit. It is important to be able to accurately predict and estimate the performance of an integrated circuit before the integrated circuit is fabricated. Techniques are needed to provide accurate, fast estimates of the performance of an integrated circuit. It is often desirable in the microelectronics industry to be able to implement physical solutions in as little time as possible for coping with new market opportunities and/or emerging problems. Computer-aided simulations are often used to predict the behaviors of the electrical circuits before they are manufactured. This is done so that design errors are corrected and design parameters are optimized prior to production. It is well known, for example, to use computers and software simulators such as SPICE for obtaining fairly accurate predictions of the analog behaviors of complex circuitry. A number of logic design tools are also commercially available.
In conventional systems, computations required by circuit/logic design automation tools are implemented by one or more central processing units (CPUs). However, as model evaluation times continue to dominate the total simulation time for most Integrated circuit designs, improved systems for performing the required computations are needed.